‘Certainly I am,’ says Mr Hancock, ‘but I have bought a very handsome parcel of land in Mary-le-Bone where I mean to do so.’
Mr Thorpe takes his hand from the cherub and places it upon his wigged pate. ‘A great distance from here,’ he says.
‘Quite so,’ says the merchant. ‘In London, or near as makes no difference. The countryside there is wide and pretty, and so close to the fashionable squares. Every gentleman wants a country home, and how right you are, sir: now is the time. Now is the time.’
Jem Thorpe clings to his notion like a drowning man. ‘That is a great distance for my team to travel,’ he says. ‘I suppose you …?’ But the supposing, however groped for, does not come to him. ‘You mean to take your business elsewhere,’ he concludes flatly. ‘You mean not to hire my men.’
‘It would, I fear, hardly be practical.’ Mr Hancock is anxious for his pigeon pie cooling on his desk, a skin puckering upon its gravy. ‘A shame, but what is there to be done? Now you must allow me—’
‘There is plenty to be done,’ says Jem Thorpe. ‘Were you not born here? Yes, you were; I know you, I know your family, and your father would never have treated my father in the manner you now treat me.’
Mention of his father pricks at Mr Hancock. He shuffles, defenceless, as the shipwright goes on, ‘If each man born here were to do as you are doing, there would be no town left at all. Make your fortune in London, sir, nobody grudges you that, but do not spend it there too!’
‘I must look to my own interests.’
‘Your interests are our interests!’ Mr Thorpe’s eyes have a great deal of white to them. ‘Or ought to be! Sir, why build there when you can build here?’
He shakes his head. Why keep an ass when you have the means for racehorses? ‘That is where the opportunity is,’ he says.
‘You have the money –’ Jem jabs his finger – ‘therefore you make the opportunity!’ He looks about himself. ‘I declare, you are as bad as the Admiralty. They grudge us the work we are due, and now so do you.’
The pain these words causes Mr Hancock is startling. ‘I have bought land here,’ he protests, ‘good growing land at Lady-well. I shall cultivate fruit and vegetables; those want jobs—’
‘Fruit-picking!’ spits Thorpe. ‘Children’s work! Old women’s work! Not for my men! Unrivalled, sir, unrivalled in their capabilities. No. If we cannot build ships we ought at least to build houses.’
‘My hiring you would be no more than an act of charity,’ says Mr Hancock.
‘An act of unity.’ Mr Thorpe would almost place his foot at the threshold; instead he doffs hat and wig and all, and clasps them to his chest. His head is shiny back to its crown, and thence fuzzed with greying curls. ‘Come, sir,’ says he, ‘we cannot go on without regular employment.’
‘I am sorry,’ says Mr Hancock.
They stand in dismay, neither one knowing what else to say. Jem Thorpe knows certainly what he would say, for once or twice he draws breath, and shifts upon his feet as if he were about to burst again into speech, but as for what he should say he is at a loss, and so remains silent.
From far down the street and beyond the lane there comes a voice, such a scrap of a call as might be made by a bird, and at such distance as to make it of no significance. Jem Thorpe, however, marks it, and tips his head. It comes again, a little nearer: ‘Daddy!’
‘Ah,’ he says. ‘My children,’ and they are at the end of Union Street, a girl in a white apron and a boy in white stockings, bending at the waist in their enthusiasm to shout his name.
‘Come home!’ they call, cupping their hands about their mouths. ‘Mama says where be you?’
‘My children,’ he repeats. ‘You do not think of them. I suppose you have no occasion to. I am coming!’ He holds a hand up to them. To Mr Hancock he says, ‘It is clear to me that you share none of our concerns. None. That is to your discredit, not to ours.’
Mr Hancock is torn quite in two. He has sought to make the best profit he can from the surprise of his mermaid; to rescue his reputation from mockery, and to raise himself some little way up in the world. He is inquisitive, in fact, as to what might come next, and refreshed by the newness of his situation: to build in a place where his forebears have not built before, and for people with whom he shares no bond of blood or society, is an appealing prospect. Why should he not build in Mary-le-Bone if he wishes?
And yet the cost of it is more than he can stomach. ‘Jem,’ he says as Mr Thorpe walks away. ‘Jem, attend a moment.’ He descends from his step and pursues the shipwright, who wavers. ‘I do have work for you.’
‘Aye?’
‘Aye. I lost my ship.’ He shuffles in the dirt. He had not yet thought what to do about the Calliope’s replacement; this decision comes almost viscerally, as if he made it in peril of his life. ‘I shall need a new one.’
Mr Thorpe is quiet for a moment. He narrows his eyes as if Mr Hancock were a troubling calculation.
‘Truly,’ says Mr Hancock. ‘You and any men you like; I leave that to your own judgement. I won’t meddle in your methods for even one second.’
‘And you’ll pay us what we are worth?’
‘Aye. And the sweepings, the chips, all the wood that’s over – that is yours too.’
‘As it should be.’
‘As it should be.’
The children of Jem Thorpe caper up now, and tuck themselves one under each of his arms. Their eyes are very bright with their exertion, and their shoulders heave as they snatch at their breath. Mr Thorpe cups his palm about the back of his son’s head. ‘Very well,’ he says. ‘Time I returned to my home.’
‘And you are satisfied?’ asks Mr Hancock. The children watch dumbly.
‘Aye,’ says Jem Thorpe, and although he does not smile his brow uncreases itself, and he stands a little taller. ‘That is the work I want.’
‘Good. Ah, but Jem, I want one more thing.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I’ve a new venture in mind – I need a ship right away. Something modest and seaworthy, for business in the North Sea only. Not much beyond, I would not have thought. Do you know of anything likely?’
Mr Thorpe squints. ‘The North Sea? That is not your usual area.’
‘We must always be prepared for change. That is how we survive.’
‘Aye, well, I reckon I know a likely bet. The Unicorn, on the blocks at Mitchell’s yard, although he has no buyer for it yet. You might take a look.’
‘Much obliged.’
Jem Thorpe walks away with his children swinging at his arms, filling up his long strides with their leaps and skips. Mr Hancock shades his eyes against the redding horizon to see them go, and meanwhile hears – from this place and that, in streets unseen – the rising calls of women as they go to their thresholds and call home the ones they love. The bells of St Paul’s and St Nicholas’s begin to chime in conversation with one another, and from the back lane rises the percussion of children’s running feet. Mr Hancock returns to his own doorstep, where no wife stands with her arms outstretched to him, and no children buzz with their observations of the day.
The cat, at least, emerges from some shadow or other, and remarks upon his arrival with an impertinent chirp. He bends to chaff her ears but she’ll none of it, and swipes at his hand, and canters crook-backed across the floorboards with her tail puffed up.
‘Please yourself,’ he murmurs, and pacing alone to his cold pie is perplexingly put in mind of Angelica Neal, as if she had just sighed past him in the darkness of the hall. He thinks, how much longer can I tie myself to this town? Heaven help me, I’ll not tolerate such solitude much longer. He thinks, what he has long known, there is not a single woman in Deptford who will please me.
SIX
Angelica is sick with nerves; she has never known a thing like it. For two days she walks about her rooms and weeps intermittently. Grief crouches like a demon on her chest by night; by day it hangs about her shoulders and every little thing sets her o
ff crying again. The first evening she cannot control the panic in her breast; she writes to him, and pays for its delivery, but although she stays by the window all night and through into the next morning there is no reply. Her food is like ashes in her mouth. She cannot look at Mrs Frost, who is unable to entirely conceal her satisfaction at Mr Rockingham’s departure.
‘Perhaps you should try going out,’ says Mrs Frost as coaxingly as she is able. ‘The theatre; you like that. Shall I write to some of your acquaintances? I think one of them will have a box for you.’
‘No, no. No theatre. I must wait here in case he sends word.’
‘And then the pleasure gardens are busy, they say, now that Parliament is back in session.’
Tears escape Angelica’s closed eyes and roll down her cheeks. ‘I cannot,’ she says. ‘I cannot be seen in such a way. I want nothing of any of this.’
‘Now, you must try—’
‘Why? What is the use in it? Oh, it is all very well for you to say; this is a triumph for you, is it not? You have not had your heart broken.’
‘Angelica, you have not known him even two weeks.’
‘Juliet knew Romeo three days.’
‘And if you had paid as much attention to the play as you do the audience, you would know not an ounce of good came of it. You are being a fool.’
‘You are made of stone.’
‘I will summon Mrs Fortescue,’ says Mrs Frost. ‘She will have some sense.’
‘No!’ cries Angelica in a panic. ‘Not Bel! I beg you, do not let Bel know of this misfortune. And besides,’ she spits, ‘she is married now. Her fine Hanover Square wedding won at such expense – she’ll want none of me now she is elevated.’
‘Well – perhaps then—’
‘Leave me be! I want nothing! I want only to wait for him.’ Angelica flounces into her bedroom.
She may be forgiven. If such stirrings of amorous passion came as a shock to her, being spurned by the object of her most ardent affection is quite beyond Angelica Neal’s apprehension. Love grapples judgement and experience from the hands of even the wisest of souls: what hope is there for anybody else?
On the morning of the third day, he returns.
She is locked in her bedroom, her eyes raw, with blue shadows beneath. Her chemise reeks and is stained, for she has not thought to change it in days, and until this moment had barely noticed. She marks this fact with some interest: her anguish is most certainly genuine, then. Even her hair is in disarray.
When all of a sudden she hears his voice softly without, she thinks her heart must crash out of her body; she thinks the blood pounds so hard in her veins it must rupture them one by one. She can barely stand for shaking, but she stumbles to the door and hears Mrs Frost’s voice: ‘Greatly distressed – no time – let her be.’
Angelica throws open her door. In the living room Mr Rockingham looks as sorry as she, his hat in his hands, and his face all drawn and tired.
‘Good day, sir,’ she says, and it is an agony to look upon him; she does not know if he is hers; she thinks she will not bear it if he has only come to take himself away again.
He looks at her, and looks, and parts his lips helplessly. His poor bruised eyes are fixed upon her face, and he reaches out his hands. ‘I have barely slept while we were parted,’ he croaks.
‘Huh! At the gaming table all night, I suppose,’ says Mrs Frost.
‘Go away, Eliza,’ whispers Angelica.
‘You can tell it by the stink of him,’ says her friend. ‘He has been carousing, not pining. Open your eyes, madam.’
Angelica is gazing steadily at her lieutenant. She swallows hard. ‘I said, go away.’
They lie on their naked bellies side by side, and Mr Rockingham strokes his hand down Angelica’s back. He fits his fingers into the valley of her spine; on either side her flesh swells warm and soft to her hips, her waist, her ribs. Her eyes are closed; there is a little gloss of sweat in the crook of her elbow, where she pillows her face. Her curls are bound safely but the pleats of her cap are crushed: the corner of her mouth twitches upward.
‘Why do you keep that woman with you,’ asks Georgie, ‘when you and she are so at odds?’
She sighs, and her eyelids flutter. ‘We are more often in accord,’ she whispers. ‘She is my most beloved friend.’ She is not the first woman to confuse ‘beloved’ with ‘necessary’.
‘You are too loyal.’
‘No, no.’ She turns to him, pulling her knees up to her chest and blinking sweetly. ‘We have known one another a long time, since I first arrived in London.’ She will not tell him of the days they were maids together in a magistrate’s house, for she likes to screw her history tight inside her bosom. The past is the past, and beyond helping: it strikes her as unseemly – untidy, unnecessary – to air it. Nor, therefore, will she tell him that it was Mrs Frost who first encouraged her into the Temple of Venus, and thence King’s Place. When she remembers their being girls, racked with laughter at one another’s hilarity, or crushed into a narrow bed as dawn broke, whispering their secrets to one another, she feels such warmth. And so she only says, ‘She was kind to me when there was no other soul to remember me.’
‘Hmm.’
‘Perhaps she is sadder now than she once was –’ she cannot have George think she chooses her friends carelessly – ‘and so her good qualities are not as evident to you as they are to me. You do not know the hardships an abandoned wife must endure.’
‘Abandoned!’ says Rockingham. ‘Stuff and nonsense. She can hardly want for her husband, you treat her so well.’
‘If I could do more, I would,’ says Angelica with pride. ‘She might have gone her own way, might she not, when my protector died and I was penniless? And she did not. She found me this place and she has got me well set.’ She closes her eyes again, and hooks her fingers through his. ‘She has helped me in all kinds of ways. You cannot imagine.’
Still he persists. ‘But she does not help you now.’ He is stung more by her tender history with Mrs Frost than by her mention of her old lover.
‘Maybe not.’
‘And besides –’ he presses his body to hers, dragging the sheet over their heads – ‘you have me now. I am here to help you. I am your friend. And I mean to be your keeper too.’
These words fizz in her blood. ‘Really?’
‘Truly.’ He takes her face in his hands. ‘You need struggle no longer. You need not see other men. I shall pay for you.’
‘Oh!’
‘Anything, anything you need. Say the word.’ He seizes her wrists and she feels him growing hard again. She is overwhelmed with him; her fingertips brush his hair; his breath is on her cheek; their noses touch, their teeth, their eyelashes. ‘I shall never have you want for so much as a pin,’ he says.
‘You are so kind. My love, my love,’ and such heat and an aching in her heart she does not know what to do with, as if she were bewitched.
‘And you will be mine,’ he whispers, hooking one thigh between hers so that they fall open; she draws him into her arms. ‘All and entirely my own. Oh! My dear one!’
But here is Mrs Frost tapping at the door. ‘Angelica,’ she insists. ‘Angelica, come out. You are wanted here.’
Rockingham lets out a groan and flops onto his back. ‘That woman!’
‘Perhaps you are right,’ says Angelica. ‘She is overbearing in the extreme.’ She sits up. ‘Shall I go to her, then?’
‘No, no,’ he caresses. ‘Stay here with me.’
‘I think I must, or she will never be easy.’ Angelica rises naked from the bed and opens the door in her perfect undress. ‘What now, Spindleshanks?’ she demands. She has a delightful plump body, classical in its proportions – although her legs are a little too short – and while some years have passed since she caught the painterly eye of Mr Romney in King’s Place, she remains testament to his good taste.
Mrs Frost will not look at her; she fixes her gaze upon the door handle. ‘There is a man here to s
ee you.’
Angelica leans against the door frame, her arm behind her head. Her breasts rise pacifically. ‘There is a man already here to see me,’ she says. ‘I know not how else to convey to you that I am indisposed.’
‘He has been here before. Again and again. You may know him – he says he is the mermaid man.’
She laughs. ‘The mermaid man! Georgie, mark this! That gentleman who brought us together – the man who discovered the horrid little sea-sprite – is waiting to see me. Well, he could not tolerate me before, so I wonder what has changed.’ She claps her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh! Does he believe he can afford me now? What did I hear, that the thing is sold? He means to trade one curiosity in for another; Eliza, what fun! Did you bring him inside?’
‘No, he is still on the street.’
‘That’s as well. For what am I to tell him? Do I oblige dear George, and closet myself from all men but him? Or do I take your advice, Eliza, and make myself available to any body with a few pounds in his pocket?’ She passes by her friend, who flinches from her, and goes into the living room. The flesh on the backs of her thighs quivers as she moves. ‘Who do I please? Or do I, perhaps, form a compromise?’ She feels pleasantly giddy to be undressed in that room of her own volition; and indeed, before her lieutenant began visiting her she was rarely ever so undressed at all. A man who is pleased to collect up the pins as he strips her is a rare jewel.
She throws her shawl about her shoulders as she goes to the open window – ‘I am not, after all, a peep show’ – and leans out to view the street, her hands on the window ledge. The stout and shabby Mr Hancock stands below expectantly.
‘Ahoy!’ she cries. ‘The maritime wonder!’ She lets her shawl slip off one shoulder, and bolsters her bosom on her crossed arms.
‘I – ah – ahoy.’
‘He does not know what to do with himself!’ she crows over her shoulder. To the street she calls, ‘You find me otherwise engaged. What brings you to my doorstep after such an absence?’
‘I wished to see you,’ he says. ‘You see, many things have occurred and I found myself – I mean to say, I thought – I wondered if …’
The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock Page 19